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BIZ: Have you guys ever been tempted to make something other than an RPG?



Muzyka: We would argue we're making all kinds of things other than RPGs. But RPG's definition is so broad now it almost covers every game. I asked a bunch of developers this one time and they were arguing about it. What game doesn't have you playing a roll of some sort? There's very few. In even those you could argue that you're playing some roll; for example, you're playing the roll of the guy playing the board game, which is kind of abstract, but in almost every other game you're playing a role like a tennis player in Wii Tennis or a galactic adventurer in Mass Effect.



Zeschuk: I think it gets even crazier than that even. Here's a game where you choose your face and character, you have all these combats and do all these things to level up your character and change your abilities; that's not an RPG, that's Fight Night.



Muzyka: So what is an RPG? If it's aspirational fantasy fulfillment and you're playing a roll, progressing your character and engaging exploration combat with a story, well almost any game fits into that in some measure. Our games are broadening and the rest of the industry is actually adopting the best practices of RPGs, too.

BIZ: With the Austin team, you guys are now working on an MMO, but not officially stated what that MMO is. Obviously there are plenty of rumors about it, but ignoring that, the MMO market has changed dramatically since World of Warcraft and all these ad and micro-transcation supported games. So what's BioWare's MMO approach?



Muzyka: We want to step out and try something different because we want to evolve where MMO's are. We want to be part of that. There's many ways to do that, so we're not proposing that the only way to do it is what we're going to do because there are a lot of cool MMOs in development. And we have a lot of respect for the Blizzard guys and they're never going to stand still. They're going to evolve what they're doing too. But we can take some of the best of breed features from Bioware games and apply it to the MMO space and fuse them together.



Zeschuk: You've seen a bit of shakiness with people's confidence to compete in the MMO space. There are so many things that can bite you when making a game of that complexity and size and scope. And technology is a huge factor; that's actually one of the biggest factors that are extremely challenging to deal with, especially for new people. Having the right people is essential, and that's why we're so happy with the mix we have in Austin.